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Deal reached on CAP reform

Negotiators from the European Union’s member states have struck a deal with MEPs on reforming the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), after two years of increasingly intense negotiations. The deal agreed yesterday (26 June) will be endorsed by the Council of Ministers and European Parliament in September, to take effect in 2014.

The agreement came as a huge relief to the Irish government, which was under significant pressure to conclude the talks before the end of its presidency of the Council of Ministers. The next CAP period is scheduled to begin in just six months.

The Parliament was enjoying new powers of decision over the CAP, given by the Lisbon treaty. But in recent weeks the MEPs had accused the Council of railroading them into a bad deal.

A deal was only made possible because some of the thorniest issues were taken off the table, left to heads of state and government to resolve in the context of 2014-20 budget negotiations. These issues include capping, external convergence, and transfer of resources from one pillar to the other. Agriculture ministers did not discuss these subjects.

“You can’t seriously expect ministers [to make decisions] that are contrary to the decisions heads of state had made months earlier,” said Simon Coveney, Ireland’s agriculture minister. “But we have made decisions on practically everything else here.”

The Commission’s original proposal to ‘green’ the CAP, which takes up around 40% of the EU budget, and to even up subsidy payments across the EU, has been significantly watered down. The Commission had proposed making 30% of funds dependent on three environmental criteria. But all three criteria were made easier to meet. The ‘convergence’ of payments – a bid to to end the divide between countries that that joined the EU before and after 2004 – was also watered down.

Farmers’ association Copa-Cogeca said it was pleased with the result, though it has concerns about some details.

But environmental campaigners condemned the deal, saying that EU citizens had been deceived by a promised reform that never materialised. They warned that the 2014-20 period could prove more environmentally damaging than earlier CAP periods.

“EU negotiators have agreed to ask taxpayers to keep on spending hundreds of billions for the next seven years on a policy which will continue to damage our natural resources and threaten our long-term food security,” said Faustine Defossez of green campaign group EEB.

British Conservative MEP Julie Girling condemned the outcome. “It will certainly not make farming in Europe any more competitive, efficient or sustainable,” she said. “You cannot see how consumers, farmers or the environment will benefit, so you have to ask – who is it for?”